The invention relates to a Vuilleumier heat pump, and more particularly to a Vuilleumier heat pump with an integral heat exchanger and heat regenerator in a space surrounding an inner cylinder.
Generally, the Vuilleumier heat pump employs the cycling of various volume devices, such as a cylinder having three different temperature chambers. The cylinders are filled with either high pressure helium or hydrogen gas. The inner cylinder is provided with a hot displacer piston and a cold displacer piston reciprocating forward and backward with a phase angle therebetween. Thus, the Vuilleumier heat pump can be used for heating or cooling. In operation a separate burner supplies heat such that the movement of the gas in each of the temperature chambers at predetermined intervals induces gas pressure differences according to the gas temperature changes, thereby performing thermal emission or absorption from the gas.
It is known that the Vuilleumier heat pump is provided with a hot cylinder, a cold cylinder, a heat exchange chamber containing a heat exchanger, and a heat regenerating chamber containing a heat regenerator with the pump being constructed so that the heat exchange chamber and the heat regenerating chamber are separate from the cylinders. Further, the cylinders and the chambers are interconnected with each other by tubes.
Such heat pumps have a low efficiency problem causing not only a working volume but also a dead volume between the cylinders, the heat exchangers and the heat regenerators. Since the heat exchange chamber and the heat regenerate chamber, which are mounted radially against the cylinder, are separate from the cylinders, a complex structure of the heat pump results. These heat pumps have another problem in that they are expensive to produce since they require many steps to manufacture.